ART NEWS: Sept.03
Taking inspiration from her home in Marrakesh, Laurence Leenaert’s paintings in her exhibition “Argile et Rêves”, are a tapestry of different colous, textures and techniques, infused with the joy and the chaos of the city. These new artworks distil Leenaert’s experience of Marrakesh, her home since moving to develop her studio in 2015. Oilstick, wool embroidery and leather, all sourced locally and inspired by the colours and landscapes of Morocco, are combined to create harmonious, multi-dimensional paintings. Leenaert aschews the use of digital tools or machine led interventions. Designed and made entirely by her own hand, her paintings are a showcase of her myriad skills. She composes her paintings intuitively moving between mediums as she weaves, sews and makes gestural applications of clay and paint to her canvases. Info: Cadogan Gallery, 87 Old Brompton Road, London, England, Duration: 15/9-7/10/2022, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 12:00-18:00, https://cadogangallery.com/
This year’s edition of steirischer herbst centers on the exhibition “A War in the Distance”, in both wings of the first floor of Neue Galerie Graz. It combines historical works from the gallery’s collection with projects by contemporary artists, thus offering a rereading of the collection through the prism of ignored wars, hidden histories, and repressed conflicts. Rereadings of Neue Galerie Graz’s collections have already been undertaken in the past, partly in the frame of steirischer herbst, often in search of forms and media prefiguring modernist and contemporary art. This time, the exhibition focuses on works that, in modernism-centered art histories, remained mostly in the shadows: 19th- and 20th-century works that were neglected due to their figurative and narrative qualities. These are linked to works by contemporary artists in different media, most of them newly commissioned. They provide artistic and curatorial comments to ominously peaceful artworks, amplifying the echoes of not-so-distant battles and their far-reaching consequences. The exhibition is divided into chapters and arranged according to subjective curatorial choices, built on free associations and counterpoints. Its focus is on the political uses of painting, and its common thread is a growing sense of danger, connected to the veiled and open conflicts of Austrian history. Info: Curators: Ekaterina Degot, David Riff, Christoph Platz, Mirela Baciak, Barbara Seyerl, Neue Galerie Graz, Joanneumsviertel, Graz, Austria, Duration: 23/9/2022-12/2/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-18:00, www.museum-joanneum.at/
Considered one of the most important artists to emerge from the Persian Gulf region in recent years, Monira Al Qadiri came of age during the rapid transformation of her childhood nation of Kuwait—from its status as one of the world’s oldest civilizations, through its dominance of the oil industry, to its current role as a battleground in geopolitics. The works in her exhibition “Refined Vision”, the first solo museum exhibition in USA range from surreal to melancholic, reflecting the intense and often astonishing scenes that make up the artist’s real (and imagined) memories of her formative years in the Middle East. For this exhibition, Al Qadiri was originally inspired by parallels of wealth and infrastructure between the Texas Gulf Coast and the Persian Gulf region. As a result, she poignantly invokes images and tableaus that will be familiar to both locales, in the hopes that themes will resonate and overlap. Furthermore, Al Qadiri infuses her projects with markers of both the ancient past and a projected future. She often intertwines complicated world histories and cultural issues with humorous technicolor elements of science fiction—via dinosaur remains, interplanetary exploration, or alien technologies. Info: Curator: Tyler Blackwell, Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston, 120 Fine Arts Building, Houston, TX, USA, Duration: 23/9/2022-8/1/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-17:00, Sat-Sun 12:00-17:00, https://blafferartmuseum.org/
Marina Abramović presents a new site-specific performance-based exhibition at Modern Art Oxford. “Gates and Portals”, featuring the artist’s new video works “The Witch Ladder” and “Presence and Absence”, explores transitional states of being, with each visitor participating as a performer with a small group of others. During the exhibition visitors encounter gates and portals that prompt contemplation of bodily awareness and elevated consciousness. As the artis said “This is an attempt to do something different, because in a normal exhibition you’re just a silent witness. At Modern Art Oxford, rather than just viewing artworks in front of you, you will be partaking in an experience that will be happening to you”. The exhibition was developed following a research residency at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford in summer 2021. To complement Gates and Portals, a case installation of a film and new drawings made by the artist during her residency. Info: Curator: Clare Harris, Curatorial Support: Nicholas Crowe, Pitt Rivers Museum, South Parks Road, Oxford, England, Duration: 24/9/2022-2/4/2023, Days & Hours: Mon 12:00-17:00, Tue-Sun 10:00-17:00, www.prm.ox.ac.uk/
Pedro Reyes’ exhibition “Zero Armi Nucleari” presents the developments of the Zero Nukes campaign, launched by the artist in collaboration with numerous institutions and figures from the world of art and science, to bring the nuclear threat to the attention of the public and put pressure on governments to reduce the production and pursue the disarmament. “Zero Nukes” (2020) is an inflatable sculpture created as part of the Amnesia Atómica project, promoted by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a non-profit association created more than 70 years ago, in the aftermath of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to spread awareness relating to technologies that are potentially lethal to humankind. Reyes focuses on the “Zero” as a graphic, visual and conceptual element common to all languages, used as a symbol of global unity for the only universally acceptable cause: avoiding the destruction of life on earth. Info: Curators: Giuliana Altea, Antonella Camarda, Luca Cheri, Museo Nivola, Via Gonare no. 2, Orani NU, Italy, Duration: 24/9/2022-24/2/2023, Days & Hours: Thu-Tue 10:30-19:30, https://museonivola.it/
Gabriel Chaile uses simple and symbolic materials for his sculptural works, such as his large-scale anthropomorphic clay ovens, which imbue them with a strong spiritual aura. In “Where are the Heirs of These Forms?” Gabriel Chaile tells the story of hair, inspired by hairstyles that communities adopt over time as a form of identity. His Afro-Arab and indigenous ancestry allows him to observe in his own hair the results of the process of miscegenation that occurred after the Spanish colonization of America. At the center of the exhibition is a new sculptural self-portrait, with Chaile’s hair in the front part, while the back is inspired by the shapes of indigenous ceramics in North-West Argentina. The hair is sculpted in a similar manner to the Venus of Willendorf, an Austrian figurine from 25.000 before Christ, and one of the earliest known sculptures in art history. The sculpture faces a hanging plow that looks like a comb or a mosquito that wants to enter the earthen sculpture. A new series of drawings are the artist’s interpretation of historical depictions of hair in different cultures. Like a code or a musical score they surround the central sculpture. Info: Curator: Heidi Ballet, DE SINGEL, Desguinlei 25, Antwerp, Belgium, Duration: 25/9-30/10/2022, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 14:00-19:00, https://desingel.be/
Contrary to the Middle East and Europe, glass had been known in China for about 2 ½ millenniums but played a minor role for a long time. Only after Jesuit scholars at the Peking Court were commissioned with the establishment of an imperial glassworks in the late 17th century, a very distinct style of glass art evolved that manifested surprisingly little Western influence. The art of glassmaking reached its peak under Emperor Qianlong (reign: 1736-95) but continued into the 19th and early 20th century. The exhibition “meet asian art: Peking Glass” presents masterpieces from the Museum Angewandte Kunst’s Peking glass collection, which comprises over one hundred works and is one of the most important of its kind in Europe. The multicolored cameo glass from China subsequently had a defining impact on European Jugendstil, especially on Émile Gallé, who is known to have studied Chinese glass intensively. Likewise monochrome Peking glass of the 18th and 19th century often manifests surprising forms that anticipate the modernism of Bauhaus. Info: Curator: Dr Stephan von der Schulenburg, Museum Angewandte Kunst, Schaumainkai 17, Frankfurt, Germany, Duration 28/9/2022-4/6/2023, Days & Hours: Tue, Thu–Fri 12:00-18:00, Wed 12:00-20:00, Sat-Sun 10:00-18:00, www.museumangewandtekunst.de/
Presenting a large part of the oeuvre of one of the great 20th century artists, the exhibition “Fourth Generation” gives us an insight into the main phases of Michelangelo Pistoletto’s creative work since the 1960s, with special emphasis on his “dark” period, which served as our point of departure in conceiving the exhibition. The title of the exhibition, Fourth Generation, also refers to this time that crucially determined the artist’s subsequent practice. Works from this otherwise seldom presented period, which the artist dubbed “Art of Squalor” (1985–1989) in one of his texts, are displayed on the second floor of the gallery. In addition to the drawings, paintings, and sculptures, the display includes a black on-site 70-meter wall drawing, executed by the students of the Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts and Design under the guidance of the artist. The first floor of the gallery hosts a selection of what are probably Pistoletto’s best-known works, “Mirror Paintings”, ranging from 1961 to the most recent additions. The exhibition concludes with the Third Paradise, a project that has been at the center of the artist’s creative focus since 2003. The symbol of the project is a reconfiguration of the mathematical sign for infinity. Info: Curator: Alenka Gregorič, Cukrarna Gallery, Poljanski nasip 40, Ljubljana, Slovenia, Duration: 29/9/2022-5/3/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-19:00, https://cukrarna.art/
Since time immemorial, Indigenous peoples have protected biodiversity in the face of continued human population growth. Since contact with settlers began, Indigenous communities have been stripped of their ancestral lands; the Land Back movement aims to restore governance and stewardship of the land for a sustainable future. The group exhibition “Land Back” is a call to action, a return of equity to a stolen territory, but it also offers an important question: how can we best protect biodiversity, land, and water? The first step would be to return the land to its traditional and legitimate protectors. Returning to Indigenous knowledge goes beyond symbolic gestures of recognition or inclusion to significantly change practices and structures. Info: Curator: Michael Patten, EXPRESSION, Centre d’exposition de Saint-Hyacinthe, 495, avenue Saint-Simon, Saint-Hyacinthe, Québec, Canada, Duration: 1/10-23/12/2022, Days & Hours: Thu 19=0:00-17:00, Fri 10:00-19:00, Sat-Sun 13:00-17:00, www.expression.qc.ca/
The exhibition “Playworlds, 2018-2022” presents a series of works drawn from Switchers, a collaborative framework that combines visual arts, theatre, video and pedagogy, developed through worldbuilding and play. Switchers comprises an evolving network of artists, performers and young people from Hackney, London and Mid Powys, Wales. The group addresses social struggles, ownership, racism and issues faced by young people, using collective imagination to connect city and country. Switchers was first initiated by artist Emanuel Almborg as a youth theatre exchange in 2018 and has since developed into a series of extended and shifting artistic collaborations, generating new projects and works. “The Nth Degree” (2018) that documents the initial youth theatre experiment that brought together young people from London and Wales. Convening to create theatre, the participants studied two historic moments: the peasant “Rebecca Riots” against land enclosure in 1840s in Wales and the 2011 London riots. The resulting film tackles issues of political violence and the distribution of wealth, reflecting on differences in class, race and access to property. Info: Curator: Thomas Conchou, Contemporary Art Center of National Interest / Cœur d’Essonne Agglomération, Rue Henri Douard 91220 Brétigny‑sur‑Orge, France, Duration: 1/10-10/12/2022, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 14:00-18:00, www.cacbretigny.com/
Taking as its inspiration a famous John Deakin photograph from 1963 that shows the four painters in Soho (along with much younger painter Timothy Behrens, the subject of a portrait by Freud that is on view), the exhibition “Friends and Relations: Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Michael Andrews”, includes some of the artists’ portraits of each other, elucidating the connections between their respective practices. The exhibition contextualizes key works by four era-defining artists. Featuring about forty paintings from private and public collections, it positions Freud (in the centenary year of his birth) as the grouping’s central figure. Each painter was aware of the others’ practice, to the extent of occasionally competing with one another, but of the four, Freud alone collected his friends’ work. At his death, he owned fifteen paintings and a large number of works on paper by Frank Auerbach. The exhibition includes two portraits by Auerbach formerly in Freud’s collection, on loan from British museums. Info: Curator: Richard Calvocoressi, Gagosian Gallery, 20 Grosvenor Hill, London, England, Duration: 17/11/2022-28/1/20233, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://gagosian.com/